This weekend I took a short day trip with my partner Michael (I forgot to bring along a Momoko) but I thought I'd share anyway, some photos I took.

I live in the central part of the city of San Diego, about 10 miles inland from the Pacific coast. Our weather is temperate and mild year-round. It doesn't freeze in the winter where I live. However, the climate changes drastically as you go up in elevation, inland into the local mountains.

"Julian" is a small pioneer town that was once lively with a productive goldmine. Once the gold-rush came and went, the town was all but forgotten.

Now it's a quaint tourist resort with bed & breakfast inns, historic buildings, antique shopping, and lots of stores selling crafts & hand-made goods. They are famous locally for their quality apples (something about the soil and elevation) and the Julian Apple Pie company.

We love to go every year before Christmas to finish our holiday shopping (it's sort of become a tradition for us).
This year was a very special treat because we heard on the news that they has gotten a ton of snow dumped by an early snowstorm.

I can't tell you how unusual it is to see a scene like this snowy field in Southern California!

This horse was so beautiful and he just came right up to Michael!
(He has a way with animals. "Horse Wisperer" LOL!)

We had a great time! Julian was really busy but we got all of our shopping done and had lunch at a nice old-fashioned "soda shop" there. It was fun to see kids all so excited about the snow - throwing snowballs, running with their sleds and toboggans to a sledding hill.

I wanted to take more pictures but my dumb digital camera doesn't allow me to take very many (memory ran out)!
This picture is from last year -- we saw no snow then.